Collaboration around the International Space Station: science for diplomacy and its implication for US-Russia and China relations

The recent years have seen a post-cold war all time low in United States and Russia diplomatic relations, with the U.S. (and Europe) using stern economic sanctions over Russia’s involvement in Crimea and Syria. While those tensions have resulted in some initial controversial statements and threats about the two countries' collaboration around space exploration, the two major agencies, NASA and Roscosmos, have not only recently agreed to collaborate until 2024 on the International Space Station (ISS), but have also announced plans for a new ISS 2.0 and further collaboration on Mars exploration. How can the two conflicting policies be reconciled, and how does space collaboration participate to the maintenance of strong diplomatic ties? What lessons can be drawn from the U.S.-Russia diplomatic relations around the ISS, especially with regards to US-China relations? It will be argued that the longstanding ISS collaboration between the U.S. and Russia has led to the creation of solid ties between the two agencies and locked their respective scientists in an interdependent, collaborative relationship to the point of becoming an anchor point amid geopolitical tensions. Using historical, Wikileaks documents and recent statements, it will be shown that scientific collaboration participates in creating stable, lasting ties through track II science diplomacy, across borders and political divides. It will therefore be recommended that, to further harness the power of space diplomacy, the U.S. should seek to engage China and Asian countries in its future space endeavors

Open Skies Policies in Astronomy: The Growing Need for Diplomacy on the Final Frontier

Astronomy and diplomacy have always been interwoven, from early international scientific collaboration and the first international NGOs in the twentieth century to twenty-first-century multinational projects and the rise of global astronomy organizations. The growing scale and cost as well as the need for cutting-edge technology have necessitated larger numbers of partners in astronomy collaborations. As a consequence, observing time on telescopes is being divided among various national users. Today, the astronomy community is thus nearing a shift regarding its global, inclusive character, and its own internationalization could have important ramifications for open access to astronomical facilities. This paper explores issues related to international funding of large astronomical facilities and the associated role for diplomacy

Institutional Capacity for Science Diplomacy in Central America

Science, technology, and innovation (STI) is increasingly gaining in importance on the foreign policy agenda of governments worldwide. However, the implementation of science diplomacy strategies requires STI institutional capacity and strong interfaces with policy and diplomacy. This research first maps the STI public institutions of the six member countries of the Central American Integration System (Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama) and then draws their capacity to connect internationally in order to highlight their potential for science diplomacy. Variables such as the year of creation and mandates of scientific councils, secretariats, national academies, international cooperation departments and ministries are analyzed. The study reveals several public management challenges stemming from the institutional disparity and complexity of the region, already marked by significant asymmetries of human development between the various countries. Highlighting and understanding such challenges may be helpful for countries in the region in developing meaningful strategies around science diplomacy

Patterns in rational base number systems

Number systems with a rational number $a/b > 1$ as base have gained interest in recent years. In particular, relations to Mahler's 3/2-problem as well as the Josephus problem have been established. In the present paper we show that the patterns of digits in the representations of positive integers in such a number system are uniformly distributed. We study the sum-of-digits function of number systems with rational base $a/b$ and use representations w.r.t. this base to construct normal numbers in base $a$ in the spirit of Champernowne. The main challenge in our proofs comes from the fact that the language of the representations of integers in these number systems is not context-free. The intricacy of this language makes it impossible to prove our results along classical lines. In particular, we use self-affine tiles that are defined in certain subrings of the ad\'ele ring $\mathbb{A}_\mathbb{Q}$ and Fourier analysis in $\mathbb{A}_\mathbb{Q}$. With help of these tools we are able to reformulate our results as estimation problems for character sums

Acyl-Imidazoles A Privileged Ester Surrogate for Enantioselective Synthesis

International audienceSince the first report by Evans in asymmetric Friedel‐Crafts reactions, the use of acyl‐imidazoles has blossomed as powerful ester/amide surrogates. The imidazole scaffold indeed displays stability and special activation features allowing both better reactivity and selectivity in traditional ester/amide functionalizations: α‐(enolate chemistry), β‐(conjugate additions), α,β‐(cycloadditions) or γ/δ‐(vinylogous). An overview of the contemporary and growing interest in acyl‐imidazoles in metal‐ and organo‐catalyzed transformations (bio‐hybrid catalytic systems will be fully described in a back‐to‐back Minireview) will be highlighted. Moreover, post‐functionalization expediencies are also going to be discussed in this Minireview

DNA-Based Asymmetric Inverse Electron-Demand Hetero-Diels-Alder

International audienceWhile artificial cyclases hold great promise in chemical synthesis, this work presents the first example of a DNA-catalyzed inverse electron-demand hetero-Diels-Alder (IEDHDA) between dihydrofuran and various α,β-unsaturated acyl imidazoles. The resulting fused bicyclic O,O-acetals containing three contiguous stereogenic centers are obtained in high yields (up to 99 %) and excellent diastereo- (up to >99:1 dr) and enantioselectivities (up to 95 % ee) using a low catalyst loading. Most importantly, these results show that the concept of DNA-based asymmetric catalysis can be expanded to new synthetic transformations offering an efficient, sustainable, and highly selective tool for the construction of chiral building blocks